Bodenpolitik, Bodenmanagement, kommunales Vermessungswesen

Land policy is about the choices we make and the actions we take when we, as a polity, consider land uses.Land is territory. Land is real estate. Land is our natural environment. We appreciate land as a social construction ...

N E U I G K E I T E N

Ben Davy new AESOP Vice President

The Council of Representatives of the Association of European Schools of Spatial Planning has elected Ben Davy as AESOP's new Vice President. During the 2017 CoRep meeting prior to the annual AESOP conference in Lisboa (Portugal) agreed with Davy's agenda: »My most important goal would be to find a balance between the continuous prosperity of AESOP and the making of changes demanded by a generation of planners who had no voice in the definition of AESOP’s aims and institutions.«

Ben Davy will act as VP for one year and become President from July 2018 through July 2020. Another year as VP will conclude the term he has been elected for, among other things, the following goal: »European spatial planning can prosper even in times of austerity, nationalism, xenophobia, and alternative truths – provided it finds spaces of uninhibited and open exchange, committed to mutual respect, the freedom of expression, and the right to make mis-takes while being curious. Each annual congress can and must offer such a space. Therefore, the academic quality of future annual congresses will be a key ob-jective of my presidency.«

Auszüge aus dem ersten Kapitel (Introduction): »Housing is a human right. The present book is a story about the content of this right. It brings the different interpretations of housing rights to the center of attention. States can implement and interpret human rights in different ways. Scholars, Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or other experts have explored how states have implemented human rights on a policy level. Housing is, of course, a prominent spatial planning issue. However, this book does not address the implementation of the human right to housing on a spatial level, but rather on a discourse level. Its purpose is not to find out whether [...] more than one hundred [...] states worldwide have fulfilled their obligation to guarantee housing or not—but how the states talked about said obligation.«

Auszüge dem letzten Kapitel (Conclusion): »On a global level, the number of people living in poverty is decreasing, but the number of people living in inadequate housing is not. The states did not explicitly state this, but their way of talking about housing indicates that they have already begun to recognize that in the future, they will not be able to completely fulfill the human right to housing. [However, the states] recognized the complexity of inadequate housing and offered a broad catalog of measures to respond to it. They have already begun to recognize that millions of people are living outside of formal housing markets. Most of them have acknowledged that regarding them as criminals does not solve their housing problems. States Parties worldwide reported many groups of people affected by (or disadvantaged by and vulnerable to) inadequate housing—nationals as well as non-nationals such as asylum seekers or refugees—with a growing degree of detail. Therefore, a trend toward the globalization of social policy could also be proven in the ICESCR discourse. A few states not only entered the road to national social citizenship, but even to global social citizenship.«

Most of my publications have been digitalized by BBV Digital Group (Thalia Borgs, Silvia Kleinlein, Franziska Zibell -- THANK YOU!) and are available for free. Access to publications which are protected by a password for legal reasons is restricted. Please send me an Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein! naming the title(s) you are interested in and I shall send you the password.

BD (2016-11-20)

Planning, land, and property

Benjamin Davy, as guest editor of Der öffentliche Sektor / The Public Sector, presents 12 articles in a special issue with the title »Planning, land, and property: Framing spatial politics in another age of austerity« (2016). The authors include both young and senior academics: Jesper M. Paasch and Jenny Paulsson (Sweden), Despina Dimelli (Greece), Fabian Thiel, Karsten Leschinski-Stechow (both from Germany), Francesco Lo Piccolo and Annalisa Giampino (Italy), Keith Henry, Greg Lloyd, and Emma Farnan (United Kingdom), Milan Husar and Maros Finka (Slovakia), Shruti Yerramilli (India), Zhe Huang (China and USA), Sony Pellissery and the Bengaluru 8 (India), James S. Krueger and Harvey M. Jacobs (USA). All articles deal with the political economy of owning—or not owning—a piece of land. Planning, land, and property contribute to this political economy in a variety of ways, and often under conditions that seem to justify another age of austerity. This theme varies from country to country: the loss of social welfare through land reforms in the People's Republic of China, the effects of austerity programs on Greek cities, the con game introduced to land policy by TTIP negotiations, or the crony capitalism corrupting land markets in Indian cities are examples of the critical relationship between planning, land, and property. The special issue is available OPEN ACCESS.

The dissertation examines the human right to housing (Article 11 ICESCR) at the interface of social policy and land policy. The dissertation analyzes States Parties reports submitted between 1977 and 2010 as well as comments and opinions issued by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This research has been conducted within the framework of the DFG-funded research project »FLOOR C—Socio-ecological land policy« (principal investigator: B. Davy). The dissertation uses qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the communications exchanged under the ICESCR as »discourse«. The analysis is grounded in a theoretical understanding of »land«, the human right to housing, and »the social«. The dissertation concludes that land uses which are indispensable for achieving an adequate standard of living must be »de-commodified«. The concept of de-commodification, borrowed from a reading of Esping-Andersen, demands housing solutions outside of formal markets that treat housing only as a commodity.

(BD 2015-05-18)

Land Policy

Der Verlag Routledge bringt 2016 eine Paperback-Ausgabe des Buchs Land Policy von Benjamin Davy heraus (zunächst bei Ashgate im Jahr 2012 erschienen). Worum geht es in diesem Lehrbuch, das zugleich auch wichtige Ergebnisse des DFG-Projektes »Sozial-ökologische Bodenpolitik« veröffentlicht? »Good land policy provides a diversity of land uses with plural property relations. No single kind of property rules fits the purposes of all types of land uses. Neither is a detached single family house like a community garden, nor a highway like a retail chain. Each land use needs its own property fingerprint. The concept of Western ownership works with home ownership, but fails with community gardens, highways, or retail chains. Western ownership also fails in informal settings, particularly in the global South, although informality does not at all entail the absence of property relations. In everyday practice, private and common property relations often accommodate a wide variety of demands made by the owners and users of land. In a stark contrast, many theories of property and land policy fail to recognize plural property relations. The polyrational theory of planning and property reconciles practice and theory.« MORE

»The development of land — the improvement of a tract of land by converting it from open space, farming, or brownfield to housing and other building purposes — is one meaning of development. But 'development' also has more than one meaning. What is the result of the development of land? Will there be more jobs, social tranquility, and environmental harmony? In a way, 'surprising development' is a tautology. Do developments not always involve the unexpected?How do planners react to the ubiquity of surprises? Jean Hillier (2007: 315) says it quite cleverly: 'Spatial planning and governance are performances of representation and perspective. … Both fold together memory and anticipation.' Planners need to expect the unexpected. They have to be willing and able to remember. Nobody can understand or make places without being familiar with their past. Yet, planners do not merely continue the past into the present. They wish to define a perspective that helps us to live a better life in the future.«